Creating customer awareness of a brand’s products and all that the company stands for starts in one place. Creating a communicative environment between customer and company can help to increase sales and drive marketing. The 21st century has spawned new ways of communication for these two groups and understanding it is key. One need to know their audience as well as the perception that is given in order to increase sales and sales leads with more than the casual shopper who makes it to the checkout but then decides not to buy. Read more: 4 Tips to Create a Message Your Audience Will Literally Buy

I wanted to share with you some links from a local healthcare provider to show you how even “health insurance” (it’s much more than that, but you get the point) can be interesting, fun, and informative. This sort of content not only gets patients involved, but customers tend to share this information and get more deeply involved with their healthcare providers. What does “Obamacare” mean to you? Click through to find out what health care reform means for you. Kaiser Permanente awards a lot of grants. Read full article on Kaiser Permanente awarded grants. Summer is here – Read the full article on staying safe in the sun. Here’s a great story about a KP volunteer – Catharina’s service at Kaiser Permanente. As you can see by reading those pieces, Kaiser Permanente Diablo has a lot going for it and its customers, patients, doctors, and nurses. From a content marketing perspective, Kaiser has raised the bar on its competitors by adding valuable content that its customers regularly search for on the internet. KP has made it very easy for people to find exactly what they are looking for. Content marketing does not have to be boring or dry. These articles are fresh yet evergreen, informative, and interesting. Kaiser Permanente’s patients love them and they keep coming back for more!

There’s been a lot of talk the past year about content marketing, and rightly so. The internet is the place people go to find information and if you provide what searchers are seeking, you reap benefits in the form of more eyeballs on your website, mostly through Google ranking you well in their search engine results. Plus, you derive direct traffic from others, who find your content compelling, and want to share your information with their readers. They can share through their own website (e.g., they can blog about it) or they can share via social sharing in the form of Facebook shares and likes, posting or giving you “plus ones” on Google+, and tweeting out links back to your content. It’s all good stuff. Of course, people go nuts when they hear “content marketing” nowadays and think that they need to build “authority sites” with hundreds, if not thousands, of pages. If their quest for all this content, publishers soon find that they cannot create all this content themselves, so they seek out shortcuts. Shortcuts are usually pathways to trouble. Let’s get that out there right in the open. In short, publishers–knowingly or not–begin to look for ways to steal other people’s content. There are many variations on this theme, but it goes something like this: Pick a keyword phrase (KWP) Search for it on Google Look at results and visit some of the sites Copy the content from those sites That’s stealing, otherwise known as plagiarism. Now, I am not saying that you cannot quote passages from websites; of course, you can. Copy small snippets from various websites to support an idea or contention that you have. Attribute (i.e., give credit) your sources by linking back to the original content, stating the author, and make sure you don’t quote too much. “Too much” is entirely subjective, but there is a rule of thumb you can use to ensure you aren’t doing it. Simply use the shortest quote possible to support your point. Any more is just being lazy. Any less won’t support your point. What inspired this little “mini rant,” you may ask? First, last week I got an email from an internet marketer whom I believe to be one of the best and most ethical out there. He broached this subject, but from the point of view of the publisher. He was basically saying “watch out” and be very careful about using other people’s intellectual property. Failing to do that could get you in a lot of hot water. Second, I just got an email from another marketer whose main purpose is to sell you crap you don’t need and shouldn’t buy. He was pimping a new tool (“same as the other ones”) where you enter a KWP and the tool goes out and literally rips a paragraph out of several websites and brings the results back for you to “spin.” Now, I’m telling you this: First off, the “article” that results from this process will read like […]

I don’t know about you, but I had a hard time wrapping my head around content curation. I wish I had this awesome content curation definition when I started doing it! Pawan Deshpande, CEO of Curata (who has a new Google Reader feed reader replacement, by the way), defines content curation like so: The practice of finding, organizing, and sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific topic, rather than [marketers] solely creating all their content themselves. Joe Pullizi of the Content Marketing Institute adds: Even the smartest media companies in the world, such as The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Mashable, produce stories that leverage other people’s content. Your job, like that of a museum curator, is to unearth the best content on the planet in your niche, so that your museum doesn’t close down for a lack of visitors. Those two concepts, coupled together, expertly explain what content curation is. Combine content curation with content creation, and you’ve got a one-two content marketing punch!

Joe Pulizzi over at The Content Marketing Institute recently made a terrific post about the 10 best content marketing strategies that he’s learned over the past 15 years. I have summarized his bullet points. You can read the article in its entirety here. 1. There is no silver bullet Like everything else in life and business worth doing, content marketing takes work. And there is no “perfect content marketing system.” You have to work it out and plan and execute, using the resources you have at your disposal. 2. You can play offense or defense Put another way, you can be active or reactive. It’s your choice: Lead the industry or be a follower (which isn’t as bad as it sounds and it’s actually great if you’re risk-averse). 3. Content marketing is the great equalizer The internet has leveled the playing field; small-time operators can compete with large companies with full staffs. Actually, that’s crap 🙂 They can’t. But they can do very well with content marketing. You’re not really competing with the big dogs anyway. 4. You don’t have to be on all platforms Focus on being really good at one thing before you try to replicate your efforts across all platforms (Facebook, G+, Twitter, blogging, microblogging, etc.). 5. Subscribers rule “The money is in the list.” Need I say more? Do it now. 6. The smaller the niche the better, but being distinct is a must By definition, it’s easier to dominate a small niche than compete in a giant industry. But either way, you must be unique. Don’t be a “me too” company. 7. Public speaking fans the flames If you want to supercharge your content marketing efforts, get in front of large audiences. There is nothing that can compare with speaking in front of a group of industry peers. 8. With a solid strategy, content can be as easy as shooting big fish in a small barrel Plan, then execute. This is opposite of the Fire-aim “strategy” that most people and businesses do–with anything. 9. Coordination is critical If your organization is bigger than you, get to know all of your fellow employees. Find out what they do and how what each of you do impacts others in the org. 10. Content marketing works with — not against — other initiatives Content marketing makes all of your other marketing efforts more effective. It’s just that simple. Content marketing is like butter: It makes all your marketing recipes come out that much better. For more strategic advice on content marketing best practices, read “Managing Content Marketing” by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi.